Joseph Mercola, D.O., runs the website mercola.com which is full of misinformation, advocates all kinds of questionable alternative treatments including homeopathy, and discourages vaccination and other aspects of conventional medicine. Like Dr. Oz and Andrew Weil, he is more dangerous than easily recognizable quacks in that he combines some good medical information with egregious misinformation, and readers who

Joel Fuhrman, MD, who practices so-called functional medicine and integrative medicine, sells an at-home urine iodine test on his website for $131. He claims the test can assess if one is deficient in iodine. The test requires two urine samples (morning and evening) dried on filter paper and submitted by mail. Dr. Fuhrman recommends avoiding

One of our regular commenters forwarded to me an email that had slipped by her spam filters. It was from MyMedLab, whose slogan is “Lab Tests the Easy Way.” It starts out: What is glyphosate? Glyphosate was patented as an antibiotic Glyphosate kills bacteria in the soil The same bacteria exists in our gut

Pulse diagnosis and tongue diagnosis are widely used in traditional Chinese medicine. They are based on imagination, not on anatomical and physiologic reality. Pulse diagnosis History of pulse diagnosis Pulse diagnosis was an important part of ancient medicine in Egypt, Greece, India, Tibet, and elsewhere. The specific methods used were ambiguous and varied widely from

ZYTO is a bogus, illegal electrodermal diagnostic device that claims to evaluate organ function and make dietary recommendations. Repeat testing produced results that were wildly inconsistent. The device produces noise, not meaningful information. Dr. Stephen Barrett, the founder of Quackwatch, had abundant reason to believe the ZYTO electrodermal testing device couldn’t possibly work as claimed,

Siddhartha Mukherjee weighs in on how doctors arrive at a diagnosis and how computers can assist but not replace them. Is this the doctor of the future? Probably not. I am a big fan of Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a cancer physician, researcher, and stem cell biologist who is also a phenomenally gifted writer and an unequaled

Precision medicine is a development that promises to tailor treatments to the individual patient based on genetic and other molecular and cellular analyses. In his 2015 State of the Union address, President Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative. A website for Precision Medicine claims to offer “perfect care for every individual.” Much of what we read

There is a worldwide epidemic of thyroid cancer. South Korea has been hit the hardest; in 2011, the rate of thyroid cancer diagnoses was fifteen times what it was in 1993. There have also been dramatic increases in other countries including the United States, France, Italy, the UK, and Japan, and lesser increases in Scandinavia

Genetic variants may provide information you’d rather ignore The complete sequencing of the human genome by the Human Genome Project was a remarkable accomplishment and a cause for celebration. Several companies including 23andMe, Navigenics, and deCODE have capitalized on that scientific achievement by offering genomic testing directly to the public. They promise more than they can deliver, and

One treatment for carotid artery stenosis: stent placement The carotid artery in the neck is a common site of atherosclerosis. As plaque builds up, it leaves less room for blood flow and can cause strokes through clotting or embolization. Carotid stenosis is defined as a greater than 70% narrowing of the lumen (the space through which the blood